Baby Teeth

     St. Martin's Press graciously provided me with a copy of Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage to read and review.  Baby Teeth is due on shelves on July 16th.  The fact that I was given a copy of this book to review for free has in no way influenced my opinions.  Any thoughts or feelings in my review are 100% my own.
     The premise of the book seemed really creepy and I was very interested in reading it.  The book is told from two points of view.  Suzette is a stay-at-home mother who's daughter, Hanna has some behavioral issues and has also been mute since birth.  Hanna appears to be a perfectly happy seven-year-old when she's around her father, but when she is alone with her mother her behavior is increasingly hostile.  The book follows Suzette's struggle to convince her husband, Alex, that there is something wrong with their daughter and Hanna's attempts to get rid of Suzette.  Unfortunately this book was unable to deliver the chills I had been hoping for. 
     While I don't want to discuss the plot points I have issue with (since this book hasn't been released yet I don't want to spoil it for anyone who plans to read it) I can say that one of the biggest issues I had was with how adult some of the passages from Hanna's viewpoint sound.  This is a seven-year-old girl who has had a fairly limited education due to the fact that her behavioral issues keep getting her kicked out of the schools her mother puts her in.  Suzette home schools Hanna but it seems she's doing the bare minimum.  I doubt very highly that any child Hanna's age could not only come up with some of the plans that Hanna executes but to do so in such a meticulous and calculated manner seems a little unbelievable to me. 
     I also think that because we see the novel from both points of view there are a number of things that get explained to the reader that really don't need to be.  I think the book might be redeemable if it were only told from Suzette's point of view and we didn't know every minute detail of Hanna's plans.  There are parts where it might have been interesting to be in the dark about what was going on.  Trying to find out if Hanna really had it in for her mother, or if Suzette was kind of crazy and everything was all in her head would have been far more suspenseful than being told literally everything that is going to happen before it happens.  Fear is in the unknown, not the over explained.
     All in all I found myself rushing to get to the end of this book not because I wanted to find out what happened but because I wanted to be finished with reading it.  I found very little suspense here, and overall I was pretty disappointed.  When I did get to the end I did not like the lack of resolution.  I feel that the author is leaving this open for a sequel.  If that's the case I will not be reading it.
     With that being said there were two things I did like about this novel, one of which being the cover art.  I love the stark red of the lollipop against the plain white background, the boldness of the black lettering over it all.  If I saw this book on the shelf at a bookstore it would certainly draw me in.
     I also liked the portrayal of Suzette's struggle with Chron's Disease.  As an Ulcerative Colitis sufferer I could relate to much of her feelings regarding her health.  The constant worry that symptoms will flare up out of nowhere, even though she's currently doing well at present really resonated with me.  I'm currently in remission as well but, as I'm sure anyone with an autoimmune disorder can tell you, my disease is always in the back of my mind.  Medications can stop working abruptly and with no apparent reason so remission could happen at any time.  When you have a flare the symptoms are painful, and embarrassing and it can be hard to revert back to normal behaviors when you're in remission.  I've been symptom free for almost two years and I still make sure I know where all the bathrooms are when I leave the house.  I don't think I have ever seen another character with Chron's or Ulcerative Colitis in a novel and it was a pleasant surprise in an otherwise unremarkable novel.